old oil better than new oil

[bulwnkl]

EDIT: GMorg posted while I was typing/busy.

Gary, that's an interesting idea. My notion, and I think the one expressed previously, is that the 'up-ramp' will actually be a 'down-ramp' and that the spike in metals will be immediate (within 500 miles) upon filling the crankcase with new oil. Things will trend downward from there.

I also think this general concept is consistant with the variously-expressed idea of 'scavenging,' 'cleaning,' 'reaction' with the new add-pack, etc.

The question, as I see it, is what GMorg expressed in the post just above this one. Further, what causes the rate of increase of some metallic contaminant levels to decline? Is it truly a decrease in wear? Is it simply a reaction between the new add-pack and the engine parts? Is it a decrease in actual wear from some mechanism as the oil ages (but before it is exhausted)? Is it a decrease in the ability of aging oil to suspend these elements and a subsequent suspension of the un-disbursed residuals by the next crankcase-fill? Is it something else?

 

[Gary Allan]

So, what can we observe and what does it mean?


Well, I think I suggested a modality that would allow much observation and, if not attaining "true meaning", ..would strongly suggest what it doesn't.

Naturally we could continue to ponder the eternal question, "Is nothing sacred?" as we eye up an empty box with a large question mark on one of its sides. We appear to be more on a philsophical slant then on a practical one.

 

[bulwnkl]

quote:

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We appear to be more on a philsophical slant then on a practical one.

---

I argue that the practical side of things has been answered many times by UOAs of A-RX clean and rinse phases, and by UOAs of catastrophically-failed engines and/or ones with moderate to severe coolant ingress. A-RX does not normally show an upward spike in 'wear' metals even in engines where it clearly does a lot of cleaning (eg. restores seriously deficient compression, cleans visible carbon and/or sludge deposits, etc). However, UOAs of major failures clearly show an order of magnitude (or more) increase in those elemental levels which increase non-linearly with miles. I think that is a strong practical argument against the idea that the declining rate of increase of element levels in a UOA is the result of the oil's inability to suspend those extra contaminants.

I find that the overall body of practical information best fits with what RedLine tells us about the levels of many (not all) metals in UOAs: They are primarily the result of a reaction between the fresh oil and the components of the engine rather than actual wear.

Thus, I think the practical information answers GMorg's question this way: Very short OCIs are NOT better for an engine than longer ones from a wear standpoint.

[ March 07, 2006, 04:24 PM: Message edited by: bulwnkl ]

 

[Winston]

FWIW,

quote:

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I argue that the practical side of things has been answered many times by UOAs of A-RX clean and rinse phases, and by UOAs of catastrophically-failed engines and/or ones with moderate to severe coolant ingress. A-RX does not normally show an upward spike in 'wear' metals even in engines where it clearly does a lot of cleaning (eg. restores seriously deficient compression, cleans visible carbon and/or sludge deposits, etc). However, UOAs of major failures clearly show an order of magnitude (or more) increase in those elemental levels which increase non-linearly with miles. I think that is a strong practical argument against the idea that the declining rate of increase of element levels in a UOA is the result of the oil's inability to suspend those extra contaminants.

---

I agree completely. This reasoning makes perfect sense. The particles are not dropping out at the end.

quote:

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I find that the overall body of practical information best fits with what RedLine tells us about the levels of many (not all) metals in UOAs: They are primarily the result of a reaction between the fresh oil and the components of the engine rather than actual wear.

---

Again, I agree completely. We have seen with Jags recent crude tests that redline reacts with copper. This corresponds with redlines typical high copper numbers in analysis.

quote:

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Thus, I think the practical information answers GMorg's question this way: Very short OCIs are NOT better for an engine than longer ones from a wear standpoint.

---

Again, I agree completely. Show me one long OCI with high wear metals per mile.

Or better yet, show me the trend of wear vs OCI on one particular engine. Oh, here it is, the Ford "Modular" study. Someone on BITOG collected the miles, Fe ppm, AL ppm and oil type for 75 oil samples. At first it seemed to show that thick oils were better (10W30) but then it was shown that people who used 10W30 oil did longer OCI's. The only real correlation in this data is that longer OCI's produce less wear metals per mile.

Here is the graph showing the inverse of wear per mile. (I had to take the inverse to make a pretty graph) vs OCI and Oil type. In this graph the higher the wear number the less ppm per mile (inverse of ppm per mile).

 

[JAG]

Hello fellas and maybe a lone woman or two!

Last night I did some more experiments that may be of note here. I put a brown copper corroded penny in a clean anodized aluminum cup and placed it on a hot surface that brought the LubroMoly 0W-40 oil temp to 340F degrees for 4 hours. The penny gradually leached some of its corrosion layer and maybe even some copper atoms themselves into the oil. After 2 hours, the color of the oil had noticeably taken on the color of copper oxide (hue was like color of copper oxide coating, but less dark), compared to the same oil that was simultaneously in the same conditions WITHOUT a penny in the cup. By 4 hours, the oil was quite chocolately brown colored and "stuff" was floating around that has evidently come off the penny.

The top of the penny's color was mostly unchanged, but the bottom of the penny that was in direct contact with the aluminum cup had been stripped of its oxide layer over about 25% of its surface area. A stain also formed on the bottom of the cup where the perimeter of the penny had been; appeared to be copper oxide stain.

Why did I do this? I was doing volatility experiments during this test and had room to also include this penny test just for curiosity's sake. After seeing this, I'm confident that motor oils can leach metals in an engine (at least copper); I think that with oil FLOW and dynamic PRESSURES that engine parts experience, this leaching phenomenon occurs much quicker/completely than if the oil just sat on the partlike occured in my tests. BTW, the volatility tests were between LubroMoly 0W-40 and 5W-40, Gold German Castrol, and Mobil 1 5W-30 SM version. The results were interesting and suprising and I'm not ready to post them yet!

 

[Gary Allan]

quote:

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Thus, I think the practical information answers GMorg's question this way: Very short OCIs are NOT better for an engine than longer ones from a wear standpoint.

---

I find this stated "oddly".

So ..everyone can extend their OCIs 50%-100% and do wonders, or at least no harm, to their engines (in the case of most BITOGers, yes, in my case ..I don't know).

Have you defined what "very short" and what "longer" means??

 

[GMorg]

JAG,

Since your penny "cleaned" on one side better than the other, I am curious if you think that you are observing a galvantic reaction. Is this due to the conductivity of the oil (electrical as opposed to thermal)? I would have expected that an oil effect would have been similar on both sides or even favored the up side due to ease of mixing and diffusion on the top side. I cannot imagine a huge temperature differential from one side of the penny to the other. So, I would think that the oil at the penny/pan interface would have less gas exchanged with the atmosphere (therefore poorer access to oxygen) but would be most important for any electrical interactions between the Al and the Cu. Alternatively, anything that was being consumed from the oil, would at the penny interface would be least replenished on the underside. Perhaps a protective reagent is being consumed on the pan side and then not replenished as well as on the top side. I don't know. Any thoughts. Sounds like a very hot battery though...

 

[JAG]

GMorg, I sure don't know how to explain the different effects on either side of the penny. Your guesses are better than anything I can come up with! I agree with you that temp difference between top and bottom of penny should be minimal. The top of the penny seemed to have a layer of soft varnish on it so maybe it "sealed off" the copper leaching that kept occuring on the underside? I don't know...to me the important thing was that significant metal leaching is possible with really hot motor oil, but it appears the workings behind it can be complex/conditional.

 

[i]

I'm gonna guess that M1 leeched the heck out of everything in your experiment. Modern M1 is a far different oil than the one I used to know years ago, and I no longer trust it. I stopped using it a few months ago. It was odd how it turned black after only a few hundred miles, and made an engine sound like a bucket full of spoons, whereas years ago, M1 took forever to turn dark and always kept an engine quiet as a churchmouse.

 

[JAG]

i, by "leaching" I mean something similar to the definition copied from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
"Main Entry: to "leach"
1 : to dissolve out by the action of a percolating liquid"

This isn't a bad thing and is unevitable to some degree. Put in a simple scenario, the drinking water that the Romans (or whoever) put in lead cups ended up with some lead in it due to leaching. It's just the nature of a liquid in contact with a solid. I actually think that it's a good thing that hot motor oil can remove SOME copper corrosion...that shows some cleaning power. On the other hand, overly old, acidic oil that strips the heck out of metal is probably over-doing it and excessively dissolving and corroding the engine's parts.

But I agree that Supersyn Mobil 1 is quite different from Tri-Synthetic Mobil 1. On www.vwvortex.com, there are some TGA scans of both oils and their behavior in those tests is very different. http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=313674&page=2
There are many pages to the thread so check them all.
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GMorg, I inpsected the test penny again last night and indeed the top of the penny has a varnish layer while the bottom has much less varnish. So I think this layer on the top put an end to the leaching/removal of corrosion. But I don't know why the varnish did not form on the bottom. Maybe it was galvanic reaction on the bottom OR maybe the top of the penny was like a patio that the "falling" varnish landed on from the oil above it (like snow falling on a patio, but under the patio there is now snow). Ok, I'm done thinking about it, I don't care that much.

 

[Oldmoparguy1]

quote:

---

Originally posted by JAG:
Hello fellas and maybe a lone woman or two!

Last night I did some more experiments that may be of note here. I put a brown copper corroded penny in a clean anodized aluminum cup and placed it on a hot surface that brought the LubroMoly 0W-40 oil temp to 340F degrees for 4 hours. The penny gradually leached some of its corrosion layer and maybe even some copper atoms themselves into the oil. After 2 hours, the color of the oil had noticeably taken on the color of copper oxide (hue was like color of copper oxide coating, but less dark), compared to the same oil that was simultaneously in the same conditions WITHOUT a penny in the cup. By 4 hours, the oil was quite chocolately brown colored and "stuff" was floating around that has evidently come off the penny.

The top of the penny's color was mostly unchanged, but the bottom of the penny that was in direct contact with the aluminum cup had been stripped of its oxide layer over about 25% of its surface area. A stain also formed on the bottom of the cup where the perimeter of the penny had been; appeared to be copper oxide stain.

---

I wonder if you would get the Same results using a ceramic cup in place of the anodized aluminum cup?

It sounds to me as if some level of galvanic activity is taking place between the copper and the aluminum cup.

 

[427Z06]

I thought this was a good thread, so I hope we can revive it.

quote:

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Originally posted by bulwnkl:
I argue that the practical side of things has been answered many times by UOAs of A-RX clean and rinse phases, and by UOAs of catastrophically-failed engines and/or ones with moderate to severe coolant ingress. A-RX does not normally show an upward spike in 'wear' metals even in engines where it clearly does a lot of cleaning (eg. restores seriously deficient compression, cleans visible carbon and/or sludge deposits, etc).

---

bulwnkl, I'm not yet sold on the idea that UOAs we see here of A-RX clean and rinse phases definitively closed the door on whether there's a change in the suspension/solubility capability of different oils/age of oil in regards to wear metals. With differences in the ability of different techniques used (e.g., ICP/RDE XRF/SEM-EDX Spectroscopy) in UOAs, wear metals might be easily encapsulated in contaminants that are captured in the oil filter, or miss detection because of there size. You have any good examples or studies to convince me?

 

[Nickdfresh]

quote:

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Originally posted by 1sttruck:
"If Ford was so convinced..besides dealer profits...why not extend their reccomended OCI's?"

Some companies did but they had to back off after sludging problems.

---

This is what has me convinced that this is all bonk.

So, if I leave oil in my car a really, really long time and don't change it until well after the additives have worn out and the engine is coated with sludge and varnish, then change the oil and see detergents pickup all that gunk and possibly cause some damage as a result, really supposed to make me want to not change oil on a regular basis?

 

[GMorg]

I know that this is old thread and that some may be contributing without having read all of the thread, but we were NOT discussing additive exhausted, soot filled, dirty, worn-out oil. We are talking about oil that is not "fresh". There are reasons to think that oil changes while in the engine. There are also reasons the think that some of these changes are good at the beginning of an oil potential life. There are also reasons the think that the oil continues to change and can become unusable. I grant, again, that oil can need to be changed.

 

[427Z06]

quote:

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Originally posted by bulwnkl:
You can see that they do not directly address the questions of interest here. What they do show is the ability of an oil to suspend more 'wear' metals during one OCI versus another.

---

No doubt that an oil can suspend more "UOA detectable" wear metals. But there still might be something that varies over time/use, and/or, different oils will show different "UOA detectable" wear metals given the same amount of wear metals actually generated.

Although he gives no evidence, note Terry's comment, "The Auto-Rx natural micel action carried the wear materials safely to the oil filters until drain."

All in all, I believe you have a bunch of processes going on simultaneously whether they be chemical and/or physical, and some might be time and/or use dependent. $20 UOAs and an untrained eye is going to have a hard time picking out what's actually going on. Although a magnitude change above the norm gives, with high probability, an indication that something is wearing abnormally.

The ultimate evidence comes from tearing down actual test engines, and measuring and inspecting. If you ever been inside one of the dyno buildings of the car/truck manufacturers you'd see that going on in earnest.

As far as the subject of this thread, I think GMorg nicely sums up the net affect:

quote:

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There are reasons to think that oil changes while in the engine. There are also reasons the think that some of these changes are good at the beginning of an oil potential life. There are also reasons the think that the oil continues to change and can become unusable.

---

 

[bulwnkl]

427Z06: No, I do not have actual studies. That answer was the practical one from my point of view. I still have great scientific/engineering/lubrication interest in this topic.

Here are 3 links to info on the ARX website:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

You can see that they do not directly address the questions of interest here. What they do show is the ability of an oil to suspend more 'wear' metals during one OCI versus another. Take a look at the Nissan Titan's UOAs in the gasoline section here. They show an ability to carry vastly more wear metals than what is seen in a typical analysis in that engine.

Now, as I said, this is my practical answer. I would dearly love to have more hard science and I am open to the idea that ARX (for example) is able to suspend wear metals in a way that they are part of a agglomeration large enough to be captured by the full-flow filter yet small enough to cause no increase in wear (in accordance with the field trials referenced above by Dyson Analysis), though I would be interested in the particulars of this mechanism.

 

[1sttruck]

"The only real correlation in this data is that longer OCI's produce less wear metals per mile."

Which the Mobil 1 study also shows, but the since the oil is sampled at regular rates we can see what is going on as miles accumulate. We also see why UOAs don't seem to be used for wear studies, as no one seems to understand where metals come from with fresh oil, and where they go with older oil.

 

[Big Jim]

This entire thread reminds me of the Paradox of Zenos' Arrow. Zenos proposes that if you shoot an arrow toward a target that the arrow will never reach the target because as it moves closer and closer there is always an infinite amount of moments in which the movement is insignificant.

Although this concept may be helpful in helping to define the limit theory in calculus, it has no real effect. In spite of what Zenos thought, we all know from experience that eventually, and usually sooner than later, the arrow will arrive at it's mark.

In a similar manner, we all here know from observation that if you don't tend to the oil in your car that eventually you will have engine failure.

Maybe something good will come out of all of this though, afterall, the limit is one of the three central concepts of calculus, along with the integral and the derivative.

 

[427Z06]

A lot of mathematicians would say that Zeno's paradox comes about because of a confusion of infinities. Understanding the reasons for the paradox's non-existence would take more typing than I'm willing to do.

However, there's no need to bring out the heavy artillery to bamboozle the newly initiated. We have a couple of members here that are quite adept at hornswoggling with out of context references to real research that does just fine, thank you.

 

[TallPaul]

I'll believe old oil is better than new when people start paying me a higher price for my used oil than I have to pay for the oil new.

The Paradox of Zenos' Arrow would be true if the arrow had no length, but then it would not be an arrow. But if the arrow is two feet long, it is obvious that when the distance is reduced to 2 feet, the final gap will be bridged on the next shot of the arrow.